Why I never write anonymously

Since Richard Peterson has accused me of being six anonymous posters on the Internet and of even engaging in debates against myself, I will explain why I never write anything anonymously.

In the Summer of 1966, I made a deal with Playboy Magazine to write an article about the Sexual Freedom League, of which I was a member. Jim Goode was the Playboy editor who assigned this to me, but he gave me only one week to write the article.

I was in Reno, Nevada at the time, working the Summer in Lincoln Fitzgerald's Nevada Club as a roulette dealer. I called in sick to work and then worked day and night for the next week writing the article, bleary-eyed, barely making the deadline. I was paid $500 by Playboy for this.

However, I told Jim Goode on the telephone that I did not want my name published in the article. I wanted to remain anonymous because I did not want my parents in Virginia to find out that I was in the Sexual Freedom League.

The article was published in Playboy a few months later. The author was named as "Jack Lind". I called Jim Goode and he explained that Jack Lind was another writer whom Playboy had also contracted to write about the Sexual Freedom League. We were both writing at the same time. However, Jack Lind was not in the League and had never been to a League function, but I had, so they wanted me to write to add authenticity.

The final article had been re-written and compiled in the Playboy offices, so in that sense neither one of us was the final author.

I soon found out that I had made a big mistake. Had I been listed as the author of an article published in Playboy Magazine, a prestigious publication, my reputation as a writer would have been made and I could have earned my living as an author from then on.

One year later, in the Summer of 1967, I was invited to appear on a radio talk show in San Francisco. I brought along three of my Sexual Freedom League girls and we all appeared on the talk show. The moderator of the show turned out to be Jack Lind, so I finally got to meet him. However, I have never heard that name otherwise before or since. I suspect that Jack Lind was a fake name and that his real name was something else.

Also, in the Summer or Fall of 1967, there was an anti-war riot in the East Bay. At that time, I was often sleeping in Jefferson Poland's crash pad in the Haight Ashbury of San Francisco. Poland always had about five or six naked hippie chicks sleeping in the pad. Actually, it was not Poland's pad. He was a guest, as I was. The pad actually belonged to one of the naked hippie chicks, who had a real day job working as a secretary for a major law firm (if only they knew the truth about her). She paid the rent. Her cloths came off as soon as she got home. I do not remember her name. I only remember that one of the other naked hippie chicks was named Michelle and she claimed to have had sex with 4,000 guys.

Anyway, I decided to write a letter to the editor of Time Magazine about the anti-war riot I had just witnessed. Since my letter was a bit militant, I decided not to sign my own name. Another resident of the hippie crash pad was named Burt Kohl, who was constantly having sex with all the girls. I asked his permission and he gave it to sign his name to my letter to Time Magazine.

The letter was in fact published in Time Magazine. I showed it to Burt Kohl (who never would have seen it otherwise) and he proudly went around showing the letter under his name which had been published in Time Magazine.

After that, I decided never to do it again. Thirty-five years have passed since 1967 and I have never again written an anonymous letter, and I never will either.

Nevertheless, I have often been accused of writing anonymous letters. In January, 1993, the corrupt Lynchburg Commonwealth Attorney, Bill Petty, who was a participant in the kidnapping of my daughter Shamema and of my mother, Dr. Marjorie Sloan, produced in court anonymous letters he claimed that I had written. His case against me was based on those letters. I had not written those letters, had not known about them, and had had nothing to do with them. Anybody familiar with my writing style would have realized that I had not written those letters.